The Chameleon Conspiracy dg-3

by Haggai Harmon

  In the early morning, I shuddered awake, cognizant of light streaming into the hut. There was a smell of burning wood.

  One of the men was making coffee on a small fire in the middle of the room. He offered me a small, ornamented, bronze-colored cup with thick, bittersweet coffee. It was no time to be picky. I held the cup in my hands to warm them up and emptied it in one gulp. Slowly, tentatively, I walked outside. Two of the men followed me and when they saw me looking around, they pointed at the huge mountain range ahead of us and said, “Ararat!”

  We were in a landscape of jagged stone high up above the timberline. Outside our hut I saw about a hundred tribesmen camping on the grounds.

  “Turkey,” said my host, pointing toward the ground. “Turkey.” That explained why he didn’t seem to be worried that the Iranian military Jeeps would continue their man-hunt. Although there’d been no checkpoint and no change in the terrain for the past few days, we were in a different country.

  I’m out of Iran! I’m in Turkey! I wanted to yell. Thank god. A pickup truck came through a dirt road to the hut, and my hosts signaled me to enter the truck’s cabin. I waved good-bye to them. We had barely exchanged a word, and I had no idea who they were. But they had saved my life, part of a team of anonymous lifesavers.

  The truck was driven by a small-framed, chain-smoking man in his late fifties. After a six-hour drive off-road we finally hit a paved road. The first sights that struck me with the reality of having finally left Iran were signs on a roadside gas station and restaurant in the Latin alphabet: kredi, with the capital I dotted. In his quest to modernize Turkey, Kemal Ataturk had made all Turks convert from the ornate Arabic script to the far more efficient Latin in six intense months in the 1920s.

  An hour later, the truck stopped in the center of a small town. There was a figure in the distance, with uniformed men on either side of him. I rubbed my eyes. Could it be? At last, a familiar face. Casey Bauer. I heaved a sigh of relief.

  The truck came to a stop. “Khuda hafez.” Good-bye. I used my Farsi cautiously. I gave the driver my gun. I wouldn’t need it in Turkey-keeping it could even get me into trouble. My driver smiled in gratitude and drove off, waving his hand through the open window.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Casey’s face split into a grin. “Good to have you in one piece,” he said, opening his arms for a hug.

  I nodded. “Thanks, I’m so glad to be back. Is Erikka OK?”

  “She’s fine. We managed to spirit her out through the Tehran airport. She’s back in Vienna.” He looked at me, at the traces of truck riding and Jeep-escaping, of horse back riding and mud huts on my face and clothes. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said, not unkindly.

  A hot shower and a shave in a modest local hotel and a hearty meal were all I needed.

  We drove toward Istanbul. Casey gave me a copy of a Turkish newspaper in English. The headline read,

  A SENIOR IRANIAN REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS OFFICIAL DISAPPEARED. TEHRAN SUSPECTS DEFECTION.

  “Is it today’s paper? I asked.

  “No, it dates back to about two weeks after your escape from your hotel.”

  I devoured the story. Iranian authorities are deeply concerned at the recent disappearance of Hasan Lotfi, a key security official of the Revolutionary Guards. Intelligence sources indicate that Lotfi, who was privy to Iran’s most closely guarded secrets, was under surveillance by his own subordinates after he held unauthorized meetings with people whom Iran considered enemies of the revolution, and was suspected of disloyalty. A spokesman for the Iranian Ministry of Information said only that the matter is under investigation.

  I put down the newspaper. “I knew it!” I said vehemently. “I knew it! Since I couldn’t control the wind, I adjusted my sails. My guardian angel in Tehran told me that Lotfi had disappeared, but I couldn’t ask for details. Did you get my ATM message about him?”

  Casey smiled. “Yes, that’s why I brought you this newspaper. We made immediate contact with him through Benny’s Kurdish friends, but before we could agree on terms, Javad Sadegh Kharazi, who worked as an aide to President Ahmadinejad’s close consultants in chambers, was arrested. Lotfi, who’d had previous contacts with Javad Sadegh Kharazi, was afraid he’d be arrested as well. So he put his faith in our goodwill without an agreement, and we got him across the border into Iraq.”

  “I’ll be damned,” I said.

  “Do you know why he made the first contact with you?”

  “No. When I first met him I felt he was sizing me up, or even suspecting me-natural, given his position. But then, as we talked more, despite all the taarof double-talk, I thought he might have been trying to tell me something.”

  We both knew what taarof was-an Iranian custom of engaging in flattery and false humility to make the other person feel good, but still preserving the original agenda, which could be selling you something, or even killing you. A way of suffocating you with compliments- sweet talk and a show of false humility to cloud your judgment.

  “What message?” asked Casey, though I suspected he already knew the answer to that question.

  “I thought all the talk of speaking in Canada was really about wanting help getting out of Iran. That he was dangling huge bait.”

  Casey smiled again. I had no doubt he was enjoying this. “And the bait was…?”

  “Information on a major terrorist attack on the United States, in addition to all the top-secret stuff he knew.”

  “But why did he choose you?” Casey repeated with a half smile, ignoring what I’d just said. Clearly Casey was toying with me.

  “Because I was a foreigner who was about to leave Iran and could carry a message?”

  “The only explanation is that he knew who you were,” said Casey evenly.

  “How? You mean he knew and still didn’t have me arrested? I know he was a classmate of Erikka’s and probably didn’t want to harm her. But leaving me intact, even though he knew who I was, just for old time’s sake, is a bit much, don’t you think?”

  Casey’s tone became serious. “Remember Parviz Morad, the Iranian defector that Benny brought over?”

  “What about him? Has he been reevaluated? He was too evasive in answering your questions regarding the identities of Atashbon members.”

  “Of course neither we nor the Mossad trusted him. But the final verdict came from a completely different source, BND. The German Federal Intelligence Ser vice suspected that the uncle, who posed as a dissident to Iran’s regime, was in fact working for it. BND wiretapped his telephone and intercepted the call Parviz Morad placed from the pay phone at the men’s room. As it turns out, Parviz Morad knew that his uncle was a turncoat and tried to use the uncle to cut a deal with the regime in Tehran. He’d offer his services as a double agent, reporting on his contacts with the Mossad and CIA in return for a hefty amount of money.”

  “Yes, he managed to call his uncle, whom he supposedly thought was an Iranian dissident in Germany,” I said.

  “The uncle turned out to be an agent of the Revolutionary Guards in Europe.” He let it sink in for a moment.

  “So he double-crossed us?”

  “At least he tried. He’s in an Israeli prison now.”

  “And he was reporting to Hasan Lotfi!” I said.

  “Right. The uncle, Morteza Mughnia, installed a watch on the safe apartment you were training in, which probably included taking your photo as a souvenir for his album. Two plus two is one suspect.”

  “The bastard,” I said in slight appreciation. “Hasan was playing a mind game with me. I was his insurance policy, just as much he was mine. Either I helped him out of Iran, or he’d turn me in for the brownie points.”

  “He was damn lucky that the U.S. forces on the Iran-Iraq border didn’t shoot him. His American School English came in handy there. Dan, you had good sense and good luck.”

  “Why did he defect?”

  “I suspect he was already working for a foreign power. He wanted to move out of Iran, but his hand
lers obviously wanted him to stay put. We estimated that he was an extremely valuable asset. But lately he’d been suspecting that his foreign contacts were compromised and he could be arrested soon. The arrest of Javad Sadegh Kharazi left him with no choice or time. He had to take off, or stay behind and get some of the treatment his subordinates at the Revolutionary Guards and their VEVAK colleagues give those who betray them.”

  “Does he know who he was actually working for?”

  “He says NATO, but we checked. No NATO connection.” “Benny?”

  “A possibility we can’t rule out. I’m sure Hasan would never believe it in a million years if we told him he was probably working for the Israelis. So we haven’t discussed it with him yet.”

  “Was Javad Sadegh Kharazi also working for the Israelis?” “No.” That was a very firm no, and it made me understand that even if I asked, Casey wouldn’t tell me who Kharazi actually did work for. I had my own guess.

  “What about the potential terrorist attack on the United States? Did he give you details?”

  “Yes. As always, the Iranians planned this attack through a proxy organization to distance themselves from any suspicion.”

  “Who’s the proxy this time?” I asked.

  “A new name they invented, the Messengers of the Faith. We have arrested twenty-one suspects who planned to bomb six major railway and subway stations throughout the United States, all on one day.”

  “Any connection to Atashbon?”

  “The members of the Messengers of the Faith don’t know the specifics of Atashbon, although they confessed to having contacts with individuals in the U.S. whom the FBI is investigating as possible Atashbon members. We suspect that identifying the targets and supplying the logistics was made by Atashbon members who were instructed by Tehran to ‘wake up’ from their dormant status.”

  “What did Lotfi have to say about that? Wasn’t this the bait he was dangling?”

  “So far he has confirmed the basics that led us to the Messengers of the Faith. But we’ve got a long way to go with Lotfi. He isn’t an easy client. His double-talk is driving our interrogators crazy. Even when it’s information that assures his ticket to freedom and safety, you can never get a straight answer from him. We must clear a few other things first. Atashbon waited twenty years; we can wait a few more days, or even weeks.” I wasn’t comfortable with the latter part of that answer, but said nothing.

  “Did you identify additional Atashbon members through the reunion?” I was curious if our visit to Tehran was worth it.

  “At least one, but we are working on additional names as well.”

  “Who is the one?”

  “Remember the Farshad Shahab you met, the guy who studied at the University of Nebraska? Erikka told us all about the meetings.”

  “So she knew?”

  “No, she thought we were a marketing company working for the bank in connection with the bank’s effort to get Iranian business. Well, he was an Atashbon, and was actually arrested in the U.S., but he managed to get away.”

  “Arrested as an Iranian agent and was let go?” I asked in disbelief.

  “No,” he sounded apologetic. “We didn’t know his true identity then. He assumed the identity of Alec Simmons, a smart and brave young American. When Simmons was captured by Iranian agents, he was interviewed and filmed. Apparently he understood why the personal details were so important to his interrogators. So he changed some of his personal information, hoping that anyone using his identity would be caught. He misspelled the names of his parents and gave his captors a wrong Social Security number.”

  “And we missed it?”

  “Almost. When Farshad enrolled at the university, he had the nerve to ask for a student loan, and gave what he thought were Alec’s parents’ names and his Social Security number. A routine cross-referencing flagged a problem. He was arrested but released on $2,000 bail. Everybody thought it was just a simple fraud matter. Farshad jumped bail and took off. He soon assumed a different identity and lived in the U.S. for five more years.”

  “So he never graduated from the University of Nebraska?” “Of course not. He couldn’t even return to Lincoln. Finally, before returning to Iran he pulled off the final scam when he bought an engineer’s diploma from one of those diploma mills where the only thing between you and a degree is $5,000 and the week it takes to print and deliver the impressive but bogus certificate.”

  “Come to think of it, when we met, I was quite amazed to hear bold criticism from him of the Islamic regime. He probably did it to provoke me to say something incriminating, or hint at a recruiting possibility, which would make him a double agent.”

  “I have no doubt of that,” said Casey.

  “I suspected him at the time,” I said, knowing I sounded like a Monday-morning quarterback. “No Iranian would dare be so critical of his government to a complete stranger. I intended to check him out later. But it didn’t occur to me he was dangling bait to make me attempt to recruit him.”

  “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty,” said Casey matter-of-factly.

  I tried to think of other people I’d met, but my excitement was impairing my focus.

  Two days later I was in New York. After three days of debriefing, spending time with my children, and getting used to civilization again, which included taking three hot showers every day, I felt I had to complete my mission. As if on cue, Benny called.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “In New York,” he answered.

  “Good,” I said. “I need help on the case.” I was back in business.

  “Is that a way to speak to an old friend? You don’t say hello, how are you, and more specifically you don’t tell me how it was?”

  Jewish guilt games again? Well, he had a point. I hadn’t even thanked Benny yet for his role in saving my life.

  “Sorry, you’re right. First and foremost, thank you for your role in getting me out. I know it was your men who whisked me out.”

  “A small contribution to the case,” he said. “That’s nothing among friends.”

  “Not so small, given the other stuff. Let’s have lunch.”

  I made reservations at a kosher restaurant right off 47th Street in Manhattan that caters to the heavily Jewish Diamond District, and met him there. We spoke for a few minutes on the case. The Chameleon was very much on my mind, and the time I’d spent in the stinking hole underneath the textile factory did help in cracking the mystery to its end. We lapsed into quiet as the waiter placed a plate on the table loaded with cold cuts, rolls, and deli mustard.

  Benny smiled. “Let me guess, you’ll have a double helping of everything.”

  I was eager to dig in, but first I said, “Well, it takes quite a bit of this kosher food to fill me up.”

  “You’ll survive,” said Benny drily.

  “The way I see it,” I replied, “I don’t smoke, do drugs, gamble…so food is my one concession to vice.” I got back to business. “Benny, I need your help.” I’d had a lot of time to plan my next move while idling in hiding.

  “What is it this time?” he said, pretending, just pretending, to be annoyed.

  “I need access to Tempelhof Bank’s records.”

  “Access?”

  “Yes, I need to look up the bank’s contacts with McHanna Associates.”

  “Who are McHanna Associates?”

  “I already mentioned them to you. A New York-based financial corporation run by McHanna, who was the Chameleon’s victim in South Dakota.”

  “What do you expect to find out?”

  “I want to see the level of cooperation between McHanna Associates and Tempelhof Bank.” I decided not to broaden Benny’s horizons yet, nor complicate the request any further by telling him I also wanted to see whether the bank played a role as intermediary between McHanna and Al Taqwa. When I saw Benny’s expression I asked, “Is there a problem? You own the bank!”

  “Dan. We own it, but management doesn’t know it, and obviously the Swiss
government doesn’t either. I can’t just go there and start snooping.”

  “Then how do you control the bank?”

  “Through nominee directors. Distinguished businessmen. Even the instructions concerning the bank’s marketing efforts in Iran through the reunion were suggested to management by one of our nominee directors.”

  “So management doesn’t know who they really work for?”

  “You got it,” said Benny. “They believe oil billionaires from the Gulf States own the bank.”

  “How did you manage to do that and survive the Swiss regulators’ scrutiny?” I asked curiously.

  “Don’t ask,” said Benny. “But it works fine. Now you can understand my difficulty, not to say inability, to let you have access to the bank’s records.”

  “I don’t need current records,” I said. “I need to go back to 1980 or 1981 through, say, 1995.”

  “It’s possible that the records for the earlier years are archived or even shredded. But that I can find out.”

  Later on in the afternoon Benny called. “These guys are so meticulous, they never destroy anything. The documents are stored in”-he paused, and I heard pages turning-“Manheim Document Storage, in Bern. Does that help you?”

  “In a way. I’d either need to break in or get a court order.” “Get a court order under some pretext,” suggested Benny. “We don’t need the media attention if a break-in is discovered.”

  I returned to my office and found in the day’s mail Mrs. Nazeri’s power of attorney that I had had sent to her earlier, marked The Law Offices of Dan Gordon, Esq. She had executed it before the Swiss consul in Tehran and faxed me an advance copy. This was the original. As I instructed my assistant to messenger it to the surrogate’s court downtown, I reflected that at last, I was practicing law again. Well, not exactly. I wasn’t expecting to be paid, and my motive went beyond the need to serve a client. Also, the pleadings had been drafted and filed by a discreet Agency lawyer, not by me.